Good use of fine motor skills contributes to early school success. Fine motor adeptness involves the smaller muscle groups throughout the body—for example, muscles in the hand and fingers must work in unison to strengthen drawing and writing. Small muscles in the throat, tongue and lips must work together for clear speaking and singing. Pronunciation, coloring, printing, cutting, and pasting are some critical skills for staying on grade level during a child’s early years of school.
Between the ages of 4 and 6, help your child learn to master these fine motor skills:
Speak clearly to the teacher, other adults and fellow students
Sing appropriate age-level songs
Say simple rhymes and poems
Zip a zipper
Button a shirt, pants, or coat
Build with blocks and Legos
Hold scissors properly
Cut on a thick, straight line
Put together simple, larger piece puzzles
Begin to color within a defined boundary
Start to print letters
Begin to cut and glue objects to paper (for example, cut a yellow circle for the sun and paste it to a blue “sky” paper)
Between ages 5 and 7, ideally your child will have developed enough fine motor skills to do these activities:
Tie shoe and sneaker laces
Zip her own coat
Print her name using one capital letter and the rest lowercase
Have a standard pencil and crayon grip, using the thumb and fingers, not a fist
Begin to show hand dominance (either left or right)
Write numbers 0-50, in sequence
Write partner letters (capital and lowercase, Aa, Bb, etc.)
Begin to print letters on the lines of lined paper
Color within the lines of a picture
Cut out recognizable shapes
Some easy ways to strengthen fine motor skills at home are:
Have him help you cut out coupons from newspapers or magazines or from ones you print from the Internet
Roll pieces of clay or modeling compound into long “snakes” and twist to form letters or numbers
Practice cutting on thicker objects like card stock, thin box tops, or cereal boxes
Squeeze and count with a soft ball or tennis ball to strengthen hands and fingers
Strong hands, fingers, and lips can help your young child experience early school achievement. Attention to fine motor details helps the progression from understanding a task to successfully completing it.
Connie McCarthy is passionate about her work as a teacher of young children. She has devoted her entire career to making sure that her students do well at school, right from the start. Connie has an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education, and a Master’s Degree in Special Education. She has been teaching first grade in East Providence, R.I. for 23 years, where she received the distinction of “Highly Qualified Teacher” by the Rhode Island State Board of Regents. Connie also taught nursery school for four years, and published numerous articles on early education in East Bay Newspapers in Bristol, R.I. She’s also been published in PTO Today Magazine. She lives with her husband, Brian, and has a daughter and a son, both young adults. Connie enjoys reading, writing about elementary education, and taking long walks with friends. During summer vacations, she likes to travel with her husband. She also loves reading readers’ comments on her weekly blog posts.